Extreme Poverty
The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US $1 per day, and moderate poverty as less than $2 a day, ESTIMATING THAT IN 2001, 1.1 BILLION PEOPLE HAD CONSUMPTION LEVELS BELOW $1 A DAY AND 2.7BILLION (ALMOST HALF THE WORLD'S POPULATION) LIVED ON LESS THAN $2 A DAY.
As described by the United Nations Millenium Project, poverty in the developing world goes far beyond income poverty. It has a face in the hunger, health, agriculture, education and water crises, to name just a few, that persistently assail their victims.
It is the barefoot child walking miles under the threatening midday sun to collect water and firewood. It is the busy professional waking up at 4am to wait 7 hours in line for fuel at his local gas station.
It is the young orphan given a sentence for a disease that was eradicated from rich, developed nations years ago.
It is the illiterate mother who never had the opportunity to obtain a basic education, struggling to properly care for her malnourished children.
It is the unnecessary suffering and that continue to threaten human life in a world with the resources to eliminate it.
The consequences of this poverty are both devastating and preventable. Epidemic diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are responsible for millions of s every year. One of the cruelest weapons in the history of man, starvation slowly and brutally claims one life every 3.6 seconds, typically a child under the age of five.
In a world of abundance, more than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day, 300 million of which are children. Water issues threaten more than 2.6 billion people – over 40 per cent of the world's population – who do not have basic sanitation, and more than one billion people who still use unsafe sources of drinking water.
The education necessary to help these individuals lift themselves out of their circumstances is often unavailable. Around the world, a total of 114 million children do not get even a basic education and 584 million women are illiterate. These statistics, however, are not just numbers, they are people with names, faces, dreams, families, and the ability to feel love and pain. Like us, they deserve an equal opportunity to live the life God has intended for them. Former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan stated at the 2002 International Eradication of Poverty Day,
“Almost half the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day, yet even this statistic fails to capture the humiliation, powerlessness and brutal hardship that is the daily lot of the world’s poor." So poverty is a call to action – for the poor and the wealthy alike – to return to our duties and responsibilities toward all humankind and to create a world where poverty no longer reigns – where food, housing, clean water, education, health care, protection from , and representation are available to all.
Now that you know, how will you respond?